“I remixed Su la mé to defend the Norman language”

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“This mAIgamix offers eight different versions of On the methe famous song in the Norman language composed by Alfred Rossel in 1895. » This mix – as well as the visual with the six-fingered DJ illustrating his 21 minute video – was generated by Guillaume (DJ/MC Jacqueline) with the help of applications based on artificial intelligence (AI, or AI in English version). THE 50 year old Bayeusainwhose family roots are in the Val de Saire with Norman-speaking grandparents, explains his original approach aimed at defending our linguistic heritage.

How did the creation of this unusual mix take place?

I’m a bit of a jack of all trades: illustration, video and music especially (Editor’s note: MC Jacqueline notably released a legendary album in 2003 with Dr Snuggle). I sometimes use new technologies, artificial intelligence, and that was the case for this project carried out on the Suno website. I wrote lots of prompts (Editor’s note: instructions or series of data provided to an AI system, which uses this information to generate responses or creations in text, image, music or other media), I changed my requests and this generated music with various styles on which I pasted the lyrics of On the me.

How did you arrive at the final mix?

I made lots of requests, so I generated a lot of versions. The same prompt gives two results, and in the free version we are entitled to five prompts per day, or ten versions. And I created three accounts… This often gives a pretty ugly result. So the hardest part, the most time-consuming, was listening to everything and sorting everything to keep the best results… or rather those that I disliked the least. (laughs). There is rap with vocoded voices, R’n’B, the contrast is original between modern sounds and ancient lyrics. Even if it’s quite astonishing what AI can do on voices, it has little artistic interest…

So why did you take the time to work on this project?

It is for militant purposes to defend the Norman language and all minoritized languages! The dissemination of these “generated pieces” aims to challenge residents, elected officials and public authorities throughout Normandy on the importance of truly preserving our vernacular linguistic heritage, of which we we have the responsibility, by making it accessible to the new Automatic Language Translation (NLT) tools (Editor’s note: for example Google Translate). We hope to convince them of the potential that this type of technology can and will offer in the service of safeguarding minoritized languages.

Do you think we are doing enough to defend the Norman language?

Not at all, there is an urgent need to provide the necessary resources! Google has just accepted Occitan and Breton, we should find them in their automatic translations; I also heard about GPS in Breton. We are late for Norman: we are free to do the same thing! In the Region, they are strong in putting themselves forward, but in reality, we are not moving forward, the dedicated budget is not large enough. I am a member of FALE, the Federation of Associations for the Norman Language, so I participate in the organization of “nourmand cafés” at the Bessin Cultural Farm. The FALE could carry out this type of project, there are recognized, competent specialists. A number of people are dragging their feet on artificial intelligence, but the Norman language is in such crisis, technology can save cultural diversity. Let us mobilize so that minoritized languages, which are suffering carnage across the world, live and prosper for future generations.

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